REDMOND, Wash. — May 24, 2012 —Aboitiz Jebsen Co. Inc. (Abojeb), dB Wizards Inc. and Microsoft Philippines recently announced a three-way partnership that will enable Abojeb to meet the needs of its organization and stay competitive in its field by enhancing its crewing system with Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

This partnership is a renewal and extension of the relationship that started 10 years ago when Abojeb first tapped dB Wizards to develop its crewing system. After maximizing the usage of the system, both technically and functionally, Abojeb realized the pressing need to upgrade its crewing system to address the many changes in the business rules and its business models, as well as to stay competitive. This paved the way to the company’s most recent adoption of SQL Server 2012.

“The company’s move from the existing platform to this sustainable system architecture offered by Microsoft Corp. allows for the accommodation of the complexity and additional functionality requirements in our operations,” said Bjorn Jebsen, chairman of the Board, Aboitiz Jebsen Co. Inc. “We evaluated various providers and applications and chose dB Wizards based on overall company stability, technical expertise and its relationship with Microsoft to allow us to use the company’s newest version of SQL Server.”

“We are happy that more and more Filipino companies such as Abojeb are realizing the value of making sound IT investments,” said John Bessey, managing director, Microsoft Philippines. “This is a major step for Abojeb and we, together with dB Wizards, are committed to ensuring that it maximizes this investment, ultimately making its operations more streamlined and its people more efficient,”

Abojeb is a company that provides ship management, crew management, training and other fully integrated maritime services to shipping companies worldwide. Abojeb services the maritime industry by efficiently managing its shipping and crewing system, with the objective of answering the specific needs of its key stakeholders — its business partners, ship owners and managers worldwide as well as more than 7,000 Filipino seafarers.

A key element most useful to the Abojeb partnership is the tight relationship with Microsoft. As solutions partner, dB Wizards designed the system on the Microsoft platform, taking advantage of SQL Server 2012 advancements in scalability, security and reporting, making possible the major enhancement to Abojeb’s crewing system.

“With Abojeb being one of our first customers, we are delighted to be chosen once again by Abojeb as its partner of choice for this project,” said Pocholo Reyes, dB Wizards managing director.

dB Wizards, a leading IT organization, provides world-class solutions and services to enable customers to achieve their business objectives. It takes pride in being a 100 percent Filipino-owned corporation, and an award-winning company, earning the title Systems Integrator Partner of the Year in 2011 and 2008. The value-add it brings to the partnership with Abojeb are its 13 years of experience in application development discipline, change management and SLA-based support via its manage service practice. All of these are valuable in its co-development effort to train Abojeb’s IT team.

Through partnerships such as this, Microsoft is making its products and innovations more accessible and available to companies, organizations and corporations in the country.

“With its successful track record of 10 years in information and communication technology, dB Wizards is a good choice of partner to work with,” Bessey said. “dB Wizards brings a wealth of experience to the table. And one important thing that Microsoft believes in is that we are dependent on our partners for our success.”

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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